f a moral idea; and it is the
question which most interests every man, and with which, in some way or
other, he is perpetually occupied. A large sense is of course to be
given to the term _moral_. Whatever bears upon the question, "how to
live," comes under it.

"Nor love thy life, nor hate; but, what thou liv'st, Live well; how long
or short, permit to heaven."[369]

In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once perceives, a
moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats consoles the forward-bending
lover on the Grecian Urn, the lover arrested and presented in immortal
relief by the sculptor's hand before he can kiss, with the line,

"Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair--"

he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says, that

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep,"[370]

he utters a moral idea.

Voltaire was right in thinking that the energetic and profound treatment
of moral ideas, in this large sense, is what distinguishes the English
poetry. He sincerely meant praise, no dispraise or hint of limitation;
and they err who suppose that poetic limitation is a necessary
consequence of the fact, the fact being granted as Voltaire states it.
If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound
application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny,
then to prefix to the term ideas here the term moral makes hardly any
difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree
moral.

It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at
bottom a criticism of life;[371] that the greatness of a poet lies in
his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life,--to the
question: How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false
fashion; they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have
had their day; they are fallen into the hands of pedants and
professional dealers; they grow tiresome to some of us. We find
attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a
poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayyam's words: "Let us make
up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque." Or we
find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them; in a poetry where the
contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and
exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our
delusion is to let our minds res